Sanskrit
विद्याविनयसम्पन्ने ब्राह्मणे गवि हस्तिनि । शुनि चैव श्वपाके च पण्डिताः समदर्शिनः ॥
vidyāvinayasampanne brāhmaṇe gavi hastini śuni caiva śvapāke ca paṇḍitāḥ samadarśinaḥ
Translation
Sages look equally on a Brâhmana adorned with learning and humility, a cow, an elephant, and even a dog and an outcaste.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
The list is engineered to unsettle a caste-conscious reader: a learned, humble brāhmaṇa at the top of the social order, then a cow, an elephant, a dog, and finally a śvapāka — an outcaste, the lowest social position imaginable at the time — named in one breath as objects of the same even gaze. Samadarśinaḥ, “equal-seeing,” is the operative word, and it is worth being precise about what it does not claim: not that these beings are identical in social function, but that the wise see past the distinguishing features — learning, species, rank — to something that doesn’t vary between them. This is the same equanimity chapter 2 built around the sthitaprajna, the one of steady wisdom untouched by the pull of pleasant and painful, now aimed specifically at how one perceives other beings rather than how one responds to one’s own fortune.
Concepts